How to restore valuable Hard Drive Space

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bible John
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Bible John

Our computer is from late 1994 so its only got a dinky 80GB Hard Drive in
it. My brother recently bought himself one of those video iPods and has been
getting carried away at Downloading movies. He has brought the remaining
Hard Drive space down to 14.6GB's. I told him that he need to either buy
himself an external hard drive and use that for his iPod, or he needs to pay
for another hard drive, and pay for the software to run the transfer and
the external hard drive enclosure, or he needs to pay to have Best Buy or
whoever do the transfer, and they probably wont do it, considering that we
have software on our drive, and we don't have all the install discs for the
software on the drive as some where lost.

I told my brother that I would download HandBrake (which would allow him to
convert DVD's to the iPod) but perhaps I should not have said that, as he'd
get really carried away at converting movies, hogging the DSL bandwidth (DSL
was never designed for movie streaming or downloading) and hogging the CPU
converting those movies. I think that Windows XP needs at least 4GB's free
to run operably, but then again it may be 3GB's.

We have USB and Firewire on this machine, and I really think that the
cheapest method would be for him to buy an external drive and transfer his
iTunes library to it. But he probably does not want to do that.

So in the meantime what can I do to save disk space? I already emptied the
recycle bin, but there has to be other ways to free valuable disk space.
Thanks..


John
 
Bible John,

I believe that your least expensive solution would be to buy an extra
internal hard drive, install it as a "slave" and use it for your brother's
storage space. I've purchased a 160 gig. for $35 and a 120 gig. for $30
within the last year. Just watch for sales on them. You will have to open
your computer case to install it, but it's not difficult to do. If you do
that, you can just copy and paste his existing collection to the "slave"
drive and then delete it from your existing drive.

Milt
 
Bible John said:
Our computer is from late 1994 so its only got a dinky 80GB Hard Drive in
it. My brother recently bought himself one of those video iPods and has
been getting carried away at Downloading movies. He has brought the
remaining Hard Drive space down to 14.6GB's. I told him that he need to
either buy himself an external hard drive and use that for his iPod, or he
needs to pay for another hard drive, and pay for the software to run the
transfer and the external hard drive enclosure, or he needs to pay to
have Best Buy or whoever do the transfer, and they probably wont do it,
considering that we have software on our drive, and we don't have all the
install discs for the software on the drive as some where lost.

I told my brother that I would download HandBrake (which would allow him
to convert DVD's to the iPod) but perhaps I should not have said that, as
he'd get really carried away at converting movies, hogging the DSL
bandwidth (DSL was never designed for movie streaming or downloading) and
hogging the CPU converting those movies. I think that Windows XP needs at
least 4GB's free to run operably, but then again it may be 3GB's.

We have USB and Firewire on this machine, and I really think that the
cheapest method would be for him to buy an external drive and transfer his
iTunes library to it. But he probably does not want to do that.

So in the meantime what can I do to save disk space? I already emptied the
recycle bin, but there has to be other ways to free valuable disk space.
Thanks..


John
--
Click to expand...

Windows initially needs approx 2 GB for installation and operation. It
doesn't need 3 - 4 GB free at all times. You say you still have 14.6 GB of
free space. That is a lot of space left.

As for trying to free up space, yes there are places to look but generally
the space you reclaim is minimal. Keep pressing him to get the backup
device.
 
Good idea I forgot that this computer holds a extra drive bay.

Milt said:
Bible John,

I believe that your least expensive solution would be to buy an extra
internal hard drive, install it as a "slave" and use it for your brother's
storage space. I've purchased a 160 gig. for $35 and a 120 gig. for $30
within the last year. Just watch for sales on them. You will have to open
your computer case to install it, but it's not difficult to do. If you do
that, you can just copy and paste his existing collection to the "slave"
drive and then delete it from your existing drive.

Milt
Click to expand...
--
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
CERM-Church Education Resource Ministries
http://www.cerm.info
 
DL said:
If he bought himself a video Ipod he can afford an external drive
Click to expand...

excellent point
--
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
CERM-Church Education Resource Ministries
http://www.cerm.info
 
Harry Ohrn said:
Windows initially needs approx 2 GB for installation and operation. It
doesn't need 3 - 4 GB free at all times. You say you still have 14.6 GB of
free space. That is a lot of space left.

As for trying to free up space, yes there are places to look but generally
the space you reclaim is minimal. Keep pressing him to get the backup
device.
Click to expand...

Problem is when I leave to go to school he will be on his own, and he
cant figure out how to do these types of things. I leave this thursday,
perhaps he can make a stop at Best Buy or whatever and buy the drive
before then. I'll tell him to buy the cheapest drive possible. And these
days that would probably be 100GB's. I dont know where you got that for
$30, but we can look at Fry's and Best Buy. But none sell for that cost
to my recollection.


John
--
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
CERM-Church Education Resource Ministries
http://www.cerm.info
 
Bible John,

Re: "I dont know where you got that for
$30, but we can look at Fry's and Best Buy. But none sell for that cost
to my recollection." I got the 160 at Office Depot, it's Western Digital.
And I got the
120 at Best Buy, as I remember. It's a Seagate. When I need such things, I
just watch the ad's in the Sunday paper.

Milt
 
Thanks..


Milt said:
Bible John,

Re: "I dont know where you got that for
$30, but we can look at Fry's and Best Buy. But none sell for that cost
to my recollection." I got the 160 at Office Depot, it's Western Digital.
And I got the
120 at Best Buy, as I remember. It's a Seagate. When I need such things, I
just watch the ad's in the Sunday paper.

Milt
Click to expand...
 
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